Prisoners of Tomorrow (77 page)

“No chance with these Chironian robots around. They’ve got the place staked out.” He wrinkled his nose, and his moustache twitched as he sniffed the air. “Take a break while you’ve got the chance, Private Driscoll,” he advised. “And I’ll have one of those cigarettes that you’ve been smoking.”

Driscoll grinned and began feeling more confident. “You see, Wellington,” he said. “They’re not
all
as bad as you think.”

“Amazing,” the robot replied in a neutral voice.

A party was thrown in the Bowery that night to celebrate the
Mayflower II
’s safe arrival and the end of the voyage. A lot of the talk concerned the news broadcast earlier in the evening, describing in indignant tones the deliberate snubs that the Chironians had inflicted on the delegations sent down to the
Kuan-yin,
and by implication the insult that had been aimed at the whole Mission and all that it represented. In the opinions of many present, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if the Chironians were taught a lesson; they’d asked for it. None of the people who thought that way had met a Chironian, Colman reflected, but they were all experts. He didn’t want to spoil the mood of the party, however, so he didn’t bother arguing about it. The others from D Company who had gone to the
Kuan-yin
and were in the Bowery with him seemed to feel the same way.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Howard Kalens was not amused.

“A scandalous exhibition!” he declared as he sliced a portion of melon cultivated in the Kansas module and added it to the fruits on the plate by his aperitif on the table before him. “Nobodies and cretins, all of them. Not one of them had any representative powers worth speaking of. Yet it’s clear that a governing organization of some kind must exist, though God knows what kind of people it’s made up of, judging from the state the town’s in . . . a total shambles. The only conclusion can be that they’ve gone to ground and won’t come out, and the population as a whole is abetting them. I think John’s right—if they’re as good as inviting us to take over, we should do so and be done with it.”

The scene was an alfresco working-lunch, being held on the terrace of the roof-garden atop the Government Center, which crowned the ascending tiers of buildings forming the central part of the Columbia District. High above, the shutters outside the module’s transparent roof had been opened to admit the almost forgotten phenomenon of natural sunlight, streaming in from Alpha Centauri, as it held a position low in the sky below the nose of the Spindle while the
Mayflower II
rotated with its axis kept steady toward it.

Garfield Wellesley finished spreading liver paté on a finger of toast and looked up. “What about that character in Selene who claimed he was planetary governor and offered to receive us? What happened to him?”

Kalens looked disdainfully down his nose. “My staff contacted him through the Chironian communications system. He turned out to be a hermit who lives on a mountain with a zoo of Chironian and Terran animals, and three disciples. They’re all quite insane.”

“I see . . .” Wellesley frowned and nibbled off a piece of the toast.

“Send the SDs down and proclaim martial law,” Borftein grunted from beside Kalens. “They’ve had their chance. If they’ve run away and left it for us, let’s take it. Why mess around?”

Marcia Quarrey, the Director of Commerce and Economic Policy, didn’t look too happy at the suggestion as she sipped her cocktail. “Obviously that would be possible,” she said, setting down her glass. “But would it serve any useful purpose? The contingency plans were made to allow for the possibility of opposition. Well, there hasn’t been any opposition. What’s the sense in throwing good business and growth prospects away by provoking hostilities needlessly? We can acquire Franklin simply by walking in. We don’t have to make a demonstration out of it.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Wellesley commented, nodding. “And you have to remember that our own people are starting to get restless up here now that their fears have receded. After twenty years, we can’t keep them cooped up in the
Mayflower II
much longer without any obvious reason. They’ve got accommodations prepared by the space-base at Franklin. I’m inclined to say we should start moving the first batches down. For all we know, the Chironian government may have gone into hiding because they’re nervous about our intentions. It might be a good way of enticing them to come out again.”

“I agree,” Marcia Quarrey said. She looked at Borftein. “If that’s the case, then sending in the SDs would only confirm their fears. It would be the worst thing we could do.”

Kalens chewed on a slice of orange but made a face as if the fruit was bad. “But we’ve been publicly insulted,” he objected. “What are you saying—that we should simply forget it? That would be unthinkable. What kind of a precedent would we be setting?”

“You can’t be soft with people like this,” Borftein said bluntly. “Give them a yard, and they’ll hate you because they want a mile. Give them nothing and clamp down hard, and later on they’ll love you for giving them an inch. I’ve seen it all before.”

Quarrey sighed and shook her head. “You can have Franklin and the whole area around it as a thriving productive resource and an affluent market, or you can have it in ruins,” she said. “Given the choice, which would you prefer? Well, it’s not as if we didn’t have the choice, is it? We have.”

“A nice sentiment, I agree,” Kalens said. “But they still should be taught some manners.”

Wellesley raised a hand a fraction. “Be careful you don’t allow this to get too personal, Howard,” he cautioned. “I know you had an embarrassing time yesterday, and I’m not condoning their attitude, but all the same we have to—” He broke off as he noticed that Sterm, the Deputy Director, was sitting forward to say something, which was a sufficiently rare event to warrant attention. “Yes, Matt?” The others looked toward Sterm curiously.

Sterm brought his fingers together in front of his face—a noble face whose proud, Roman-emperor features crowned by laurels of curly hair combed flat and forward concealed an underlying harshness of line from all but the most discerning—and stared at the center of the table with large, liquid-brown, unfathomable eyes. “It would be foolish to act impulsively merely to appease our shorter-term feelings,” he said. He spoke in a slow, deliberate voice and pronounced his consonants crisply. “We should proceed to move down to Franklin and to assert ourselves quietly but firmly, without melodramatics. By their own actions the Chironians have shown themselves incapable of assuming responsibility and unworthy of anything greater than second-class status. Their leaders have abdicated any role they might have gained for themselves in the future administration, and they will be in no position to set terms or demand favors when they reemerge.” He paused, and then turned his eyes to Howard Kalens. “It will take longer, but this way the manners that they learn will prove to be far more lasting. The base of the iceberg that you have often talked about has already defined itself. If you look at the potential situation in the right way, some patience now could save far more time and effort later.”

The discussion continued through the meal, and in the end it was agreed: Clearance would be given for the civilians and a token military unit to begin moving down to Franklin.

“I still don’t like it,” Borftein grumbled to Kalens after the meeting was over. “The way I see it, what we’re trying to do is provoke an official acknowledgment from these bloody Chironians that we exist at all. If I had my way, I’d soon show them whether we exist or not.”

“I’m not sure that I agree as much as I thought,” Kalens told him. “Sterm may have a point. We should try it his way to begin with at least. We don’t have to stick with the plan indefinitely.”

“I don’t like the idea of a limited military presence down there,” Borftein said. “We’re trusting the Chironians too much. I still say they could have strength that they’re not showing yet. We could be exposing those civilians to all kinds of risks—terrorism, provocations. What if they get hit by surprise? I’ve seen it all before.”

“Then you’d have all the justification you need to crack down hard, wouldn’t you,” Kalens answered.

Borftein thought about the remark for a few seconds. “Do you think that could be what Sterm’s hoping for?” His tone betrayed that the thought hadn’t registered fully until then.

“I’m not sure,” Kalens replied distantly. “Trying to elucidate Sterm’s motives is akin to peeling an onion. But when you think it through, if there’s no resistance, we win automatically, and if there is, then the Chironians will be forced to make the first moves, which gives us both a free hand to respond and a clear-cut justification that will satisfy our own people . . . which is doubly important with the elections coming up. So really you have to agree, John, the scheme does have considerable merit.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Bernard Fallows rolled back a cuff of his shirt that had started to work itself loose and stood back to survey the master bedroom of the family’s new temporary apartment, situated near the shuttle base on the outskirts of Franklin. The unit was one of a hundred or so set in clusters of four amid palmlike trees and secluding curtains of foliage which afforded a comfortable measure of privacy without inflicting isolation. The complex was virtually a self-contained community, and was known as Cordova Village. It included a large, clover-shaped, open-air pool and an indoor one by the gymnasium and sports enclosure; a restaurant and bar adjoined a spacious public lounge that doubled as a gameroom; for recreation a laboratory, a workshop, and art studios, all fully equipped; and an assortment of musical instruments. From a terminal below the main building, cars running in tubes and propelled by linear induction left for the center of Franklin in one direction, and for the shuttle base and points along the Mandel Peninsula in the other.

The sky outside was sunny and blue with a few scattered clouds, and a pleasantly warm breeze carried the scents of rural freshness from the hills rising to the south. Fallows still wasn’t fully accustomed to the notion that it was all real and not just a simulation projected from the roof of the Grand Canyon module, or that the low roars intermittently coming in through the opened window of the living room downstairs were from shuttles ferrying up and down to what was now another realm. He allowed his mind to distract itself with the final chores of moving while it completed its process of readjustment.

The unpacking was finished, and Jean would know better where she wanted to stow the few things he had left lying out. The move had gone very quickly and smoothly, mainly because the Chironians had even furnished the place—right down to the towels and the bed linen, which had meant that the Fallowses could leave most of their own things in storage at the base until something more permanent was worked out.

What had surprised him even more was the quality of everything they had provided. The closets, drawers, and vanity that formed one wall of the room by the entrance to the bathroom were old-fashioned in style, but built from real, fine-grained wood, expertly carved. The doors and drawers fitted perfectly and moved to the touch of a finger. The fabrics and drapes were soft and intricately woven rather than having been patterned by laser impregnation; the carpets were of an organic self-cleaning, self-regenerating fiber that felt like twentieth-century Wilton or Axminster; the bathroom fittings were molded from a metallic glazed crystal that glowed with a faint internal fluorescence; the heating and environmental systems were noiseless. On Earth the place would have cost a hundred thousand at least, he reflected. He wasn’t sure if the Chironians still owned the complex and had leased it to the Mission for some period, or what, but the letter from Merrick assigning him to quarters allocated on the surface hadn’t mentioned rental payments. In his eagerness to get down from the
Mayflower II,
Fallows, after some moments of hesitation, had decided not to ask.

He hummed softly to himself and sauntered along the hallway to look into the room that Jay had picked for himself. Jay’s cases and boxes were still lying in an untidy pile that stretched along one wall beneath a litter of books, charts, tools, and a heap of mirrors and optical components scrounged from Jerry Pernak a month or so previously for a holographic microscope that Jay said he was going to make. The carcass of a stripped-down industrial process-control computer was lying on the floor by the bed, along with more boxes, an Army battle helmet and ammunition belt—both souvenirs of Jay’s mandatory cadet training on the
Mayflower II—
and assorted junk from a medium-duty fluid clutch assembly, the intended purpose of which was a complete mystery. Jay himself had disappeared early on to go off exploring. Bernard shrugged to himself. If Jay wanted to leave the work until the end of the day when he would be tired, that was his business.

“Bernie, this is too much!” Jean’s voice came up from the lounge area below. “I’m never going to get used to this.” Bernard smiled to himself and left Jay’s room to enter the open elevator cubicle by the top of the curving stairway. Seconds later he walked out again and into the lounge. Jean was standing in the center of the floor between the dining room and the area of sunken floor before the king-size wall screen that formed a comfortable enclave surrounded by a sofa, two large armchairs, and a revolving case of shelves half recessed into the wall; a coffee table of dark-tinted glass formed its centerpiece. She gestured helplessly. “What are we ever going to do with all this space? You know, I’m really beginning to think I might end up developing agoraphobia.”

Bernard grinned. “It takes some getting used to, doesn’t it. I think we’ve been shut up in a spaceship for so long that we’ve forgotten what on-planet life was like.”

“Was it ever like this? I certainly don’t remember.”

“Perhaps not quite, but that was twenty years ago, remember. Times change, I guess.”

Marie, who had been exploring the house, emerged from the elevator. “The basement is huge!” she told them. “There are all kinds of rooms down there, and I don’t know what they’re for. I could have my own room to draw things in. And did you know there’s another door down there that leads out to a tunnel? I think it might go through to where the cab stops because it’s got a thing like a conveyor running along next to it. Perhaps we needn’t have carried all those things over and in through the front door at all.”